Emotion Regulation Ability 1 Running head : EMOTION REGULATION The Ability to Regulate Emotion is Associated with Greater Well-Being , Income , and Socioeconomic Status
(2010)

Are people who are best able to implement strategies to regulate their emotional expressive behavior happier and more successful than their counterparts? Although past research has examined individual variation in knowledge of the most effective emotion regulation strategies, little is known about how individual differences in the ability to actually implement these strategies, as assessed objectively in the laboratory, is associated with external criteria. In two studies, we examined how individual variation in the ability to modify emotional expressive behavior in response to evocative stimuli is related to well-being and financial success. Study 1 showed that individuals who can best suppress their emotional reaction to an acoustic startle are happiest with their lives. Study 2 showed that individuals who can best amplify their emotional reaction to a disgust-eliciting movie are happiest with their lives and have the highest disposable income and socioeconomic status. Thus, being able to implement emotion regulation strategies in the laboratory is closely linked to well-being and financial success. Emotion Regulation Ability 3 The Ability to Regulate Emotion is Associated with Greater Well-Being, Income, and Socioeconomic Status Individual variation in cognitive abilities, such as language and mathematics, has been shown to relate strongly to a number of important life criteria, including performance at school and at work (Kunzel, Hezlett, & Ones, 2004; Schmidt & Hunter, 1998). Research in recent years has suggested that there is also important variation among individuals in emotional abilities (see Mayer, Roberts, & Barsade, 2008; Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso, 2008, for reviews). In particular, the ability to regulate emotions reflects variation in how well people adjust emotional responses to meet current situational demands (Gross & Thompson, 2007; Salovey & Mayer, 1990). Equipped with this ability, individuals can aptly modify which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express them (Gross, 1998). This ability is arguably one of the most critical elements of our emotion repertoire, and it is the focus of the present research. Past research has begun to examine whether individual variation in the ability to regulate emotions is associated with various criteria. This research has found that variation in knowledge of how to best regulate emotions – whether people know the rules of emotion regulation – is associated with well-being, close social relationships, high grades in school, and high job performance (e.g., Côté & Miners, 2006; Lopes, Salovey, Côté, & Beers, 2005; MacCann & Roberts, 2008). The measures used in these studies assess the degree to which people know how to best manage emotions. Specifically, they reflect how closely respondents’ judgments of how to best regulate emotion in hypothetical scenarios match the judgments of experts. For instance, the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT; Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso, 2002) asks respondents to rate the effectiveness of a series of strategies to manage emotions in several hypothetical scenarios, and their responses are compared to those provided by expert emotion researchers. Emotion Regulation Ability 4 Notwithstanding the importance of knowing how to best manage emotions, knowledge does not fully represent the domain of emotion regulation ability. People who know the best strategies may not implement them well. The distinction between knowledge and the ability to implement is established in the larger literature on intelligence (cf. Ackerman, 1996), and it is also theoretically useful to describe emotional abilities. For example, a customer service agent who knows that cognitively reframing an interaction with a difficult customer is the best strategy may not implement that strategy well during the interaction. Thus, to understand fully how emotion regulation ability is associated with criteria such as well-being and financial success, researchers must also examine the ability to implement strategies to regulate emotions – whether people can actually operate the machinery of emotion regulation. Several of the measures used in studies of the relationship between emotion regulation and other criteria do not assess actual ability to implement emotion regulation strategies. For example, the MSCEIT (Mayer et al., 2002) does not ask respondents to implement the strategy that they believe best addresses the issues depicted in the scenarios. Recent advances in affective science, however, provide tools to objectively assess the ability to implement emotion regulation strategies (Gross & Levenson, 1993; Hagemann, Levenson, & Gross, 2006; Jackson, Malmstadt, Larson, & Davidson, 2000; Kunzmann, Kupperbusch, & Levenson, 2005). In these laboratory paradigms, individuals receive specific instructions about how to regulate their emotions (e.g., reduce the intensity of their emotional expressive behaviors) when encountering emotional stimuli, such as loud noises or emotionally evocative film clips. Success at implementing the emotion regulation strategy can be measured objectively, for example, by coding how much respondents change their emotional expressive behavior when being instructed to do so. Several studies have used this paradigm to examine how regulating emotions is associated with cognitive task performance (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Muraven, & Tice, 1998; Emotion Regulation Ability 5 Bonanno, Papa, Lalande, Westphal, & Coifman, 2004; Schmeichel, Demaree, Robinson, & Pu, 2006), the activation of neural systems (Beauregard, Levesque, & Bourgouin, 2001; Oschner, Bunge, Gross, & Gabrieli, 2002), and emotion experience, emotional expressive behavior, and autonomic physiology (Demaree, Schmeichel, Robinson, Pu, Everhart, & Berntson, 2006; Giuliani, McCrae, & Gross, 2008; Gross & Levenson, 1993, 1997; Hagemann et al., 2006). This paradigm has also been used as an individual difference measure to test how the ability to implement emotion regulation strategies is associated with age (Kunzmann et al., 2005; Scheibe & Blanchard-Fields, 2009), working memory (Schmeichel, Volokhov, & Demaree, 2008), and executive function (Gyurak, Goodkind, Madan, Kramer, Miller, & Levenson, 2008). In addition, one study employed this paradigm to assess people’s flexibility in using different emotion regulation strategies depending on the situation, showing that flexibility is associated with lower distress after a traumatic event (Bonanno, Papa, Lalande, Westphal, & Coifman, 2004). Thus, this body of research supports the utility of these laboratory paradigms for assessing individual variation in the ability to implement emotion regulation strategies and the correlates of this ability. In this report, we present the results of two studies that examine whether individual variation in the ability to implement strategies to regulate emotions is associated with well-being and financial success and, if so, in what direction. Most people regulate their emotions daily, and more than half the time, they do so by modifying the expression of emotions in their face, voice, and posture (Gross, Richards, & John, 2006). Given the frequency with which we regulate our emotional expressive behavior, it is reasonable to expect that the individual’s ability in this realm would exhibit important associations with other constructs. The regulation of visible expressive behavior encompasses both up-regulation (amplifying emotional expressive behavior) and downEmotion Regulation Ability 6 regulation (reducing emotional expressive behavior). We considered the association of both with our criteria. We now turn to our theoretical development. A review of the existing literature suggests the possibility of both a positive and a negative association between the ability to implement emotion regulation strategies assessed in the laboratory and well-being and financial success. Furthermore, because we do not test the direction of causality in our studies, we consider theoretical arguments for both causal directions of associations, reviewing literatures that suggest that emotion regulation ability has consequences for well-being and financial success (both positive and negative), and also that well-being and financial success have consequences for emotion regulation ability (both positive and negative). The Ability to Regulate Emotional Behavior and Well-Being and Financial Success: Positive Associations In this section, we present theoretical arguments suggesting that the ability to regulate emotion and well-being and financial success are positively associated. We first describe why high emotion regulation ability may help people become happier and garner more financial resources, and then we examine whether happiness and financial resources may help people develop better abilities to regulate their emotions. Why Would Emotion Regulation Ability Increase Well-Being and Financial Success? Philosophers have argued that rational thought and a happy life requires the ability to rein in on emotional impulses (Aristotle, 1884; Solomon, 1993). The ability to modify emotional expressive behavior effectively may help people adapt flexibly to situational demands. Equipped with this ability, individuals might be more successful in communicating attitudes, goals, and intentions that are appropriate in various situations (Keltner & Haidt, 1999) and that might be Emotion Regulation Ability 7 rewarded and fulfilled. The ability to adapt successfully to situational demands then could be associated with various indicators of well-being and success. At a more micro-level, modifying emotional expressive behavior effectively may help people conform to display rules about who can show which emotions to whom and when they can do so (Friesen, 1972). People often attain rewards for conforming to displays rules in various settings. For instance, employees who conform to display rules at wo